Larry's blog

I was about to pull my van into the interstate after making my final delivery of the day. There was a raging thunderstorm going on, the kind that instantly floods the roads and highways. They happen frequently in the Spring in this part of Kentucky. My eyes fell upon a forlorn figure beside the dimly lit road in a raggedy raincoat and little else. No hat or umbrella. Just a raincoat, a small knapsack, and his hand up with his thumb pointed out. I don’t usually stop for hitchhikers, and I had a million reasons not to this time, foremost were that it was late, and I was tired and hungry. But something about that sad figure in a driving rainstorm made me stop. “Where are you going mister?” I yelled out of my partly rolled down window. “Shelbyville,” he shouted back. “Shelbyville?” I replied. “That’s got to be at least 100 miles away.” “I know,” the man replied. “I would be grateful if you can get me a little closer. Maybe I can get out of this storm. It looks like it’s cle...

The sign on the door seemed fitting for the last bar in a dying resort town in upstate New York nestled in the Catskill Mountains. In its glory years, the town was filled with glittering hotels where New York City residents came to escape the summer heat. Then cheap airfares offered vacationers more glamorous locales and the tourist dollars dried up along with the town’s prospects. As the last watering hole on the once bustling street downtown, the bar known as “The Last Resort” was the refuge of the dwindling population that had nowhere else to go. The core of the regular inhabitants would drown their sorrows in cheap whiskey and lifelong resident Fred Reed was happy to have one of the few steady jobs left in the town, having been the chief bartender since the joint took over a shuttered barber shop twenty years ago. Fred took pride in his ability to measure out just the right ingredients in a cocktail and know just how much to shake or stir a drink to please the veteran drinkers...